Fred Van Vleet gets interviewed by ESPN after Wichita State win

Sunday

Mar 31, 2013 at 12:01 AMMar 31, 2013 at 2:41 PM

Fred Van Vleet has made this the most exciting NCAA basketball tournament for Rockford fans since Illinois was the No. 1 seed and reached the NCAA title game in 2005. All the studio shows are talking about him after the freshman from Auburn scored 12 points, only two shy of the team high, in Saturday's upset of Ohio State. And ESPN's Myron Medcalf even did a one-on-one interview with Fred Van Vleet that is posted on the ESPN website.

Matt Trowbridge

Fred Van Vleet has made this the most exciting NCAA basketball tournament for Rockford fans since Illinois was the No. 1 seed and reached the NCAA title game. All the studio shows are talking about him after the freshman from Auburn scored 12 points, only two shy of the team high, in Saturday's upset of Ohio State. And ESPN's Myron Medcalf even did a one-on-one interview with Fred Van Vleet that is posted on the ESPN website.

The favorite stat from the studio shows -- and it's a good one -- is that Van Vleet scored in double digits only once all season, but has now done so in two of Wichita State's last three NCAA games.

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By the way, I am not sure if anyone noticed, but Van Vleet has become virtually a sixth starter during the NCAA Tournament. Van Vleet played 24 minutes Saturday, nine more minutes than the rest of the bench combined.

Van Vleet has scored 32 points in his last three games, all of them the biggest games for Wichita State in more than a decade. That means Van Vleet has scored more points in his last three games than he did in his previous nine.

He has become someone the Shockers can lean on. Which is one of the reasons they are shocking so many.

By the way, you can follow Fred in his own words at @fredvanvleet on Twitter.